Novelist Thomas Wolfe once wrote of our country, there is “a
mighty music” to “the proud, glittering names” of places in America.

During this campaign, I have visited places in America with such
proud names, each name synonymous with the growth and progress that once made
the American economy the envy of the world.

Steubenville and Detroit, Youngstown and Buffalo, Pittsburgh and Seattle, Houston and Hartford and Jersey
City and Lima, cities
like New York and small
towns like Greenville, Illinois—the very
sound of these American names evokes a feeling of confidence and strength based
upon what Americans have built through hard work.

But in many places the mighty music has been all but
silenced.Where once there was the
great, confident roar of American progress and growth and optimism, there is
now the eerie, ghostly silence of economic stagnation, unemployment, inflation,
and despair.

If you are like most Americans, you and your family know the
sound of that silence.

You experience it around the dinner table when there is a
discussion of how to pay for the children’s education.

You experience it in supermarkets when you pick up an item,
look at the price, and--placing it back on the shelf--move on.

You or a loved one may have personally experienced that
silence in the place where you once worked—when it had to shut down.

On street corners of our city neighborhoods it is a silence
filled with anger and bitterness; on farms it is a puzzled silence, filled with
questions of how things could go so wrong in a land as blessed as ours.

Yes, the mighty music of American economic progress has been
all but silenced by four years of Mr. Carter’s failures.This election will determine whether the
nation and the world will ever again hear that great sound; will determine if
the dinner table of your home and the supermarkets of your neighborhood will
ever again be places where plans can be made and necessities can be purchased
without the gnawing doubt and, yes, fear, brought by Mr. Carter’s inflation and
unemployment.

Mr. Carter recently was asked by a young woman why our
country could not work out a solution to unemployment and inflation.

His response was startling even by the rather extraordinary
standards he has set in this campaign.He said:

“You know, people tend to dwell on temporary inconveniences
and the transient problems that our nation faces.”Unemployment a temporary
inconvenience?Inflation
a transient problem?These words from an American President?

Recently, he told a group of labor officials his opinion of
the coming election.He said:

“It’s more important than your income.It’s more important than the quality of the
house that you have.It’s more important
than the neighborhood where you and your wife might ultimately retire.”

Is Mr. Carter’s chance of reelection as important as what
has been done to your income, your home, your neighborhood, and your family?

Douglas Fraser, President of the United Auto Workers, in a
recent interview, was asked about the support I have been getting from union
members all across America.Mr. Fraser, an avowed Carter supporter, said:

“There’s an absolute correlation between unemployment and
Reagan’s support among blue-collar workers, including members of our union. . .
.And we’ve been preaching for years that the workers vote their
pocketbook.Now, if they vote their
pocketbook this time, we’re in trouble.This is the kind of economics that the President told us in May of 1977
at our convention that he would never tolerate. . . .unless the people
understand. . .this anguish, this feeling of hopelessness, I think our society
is going to be in trouble.”

Let me remind you that those are the words of someone who
publicly supports Mr. Carter.They are
an extraordinary indictment of the Carter record and they accurately portray
the feelings of many union members and their families, as well as many other
Americans.

If this is what one of Mr. Carter’s chief supporters thinks
of his policies, what should the rest of us think?Mr. Fraser says that if workers vote their
pocketbooks in this election, “we”, meaning Mr. Carter and his allies, are in
trouble.But the problem is that
American workers are in trouble now—and if they don’t vote their pocketbook,
who is going to do it for them?

By the very standards Mr. Carter himself uses to measure
presidential failure, he has failed.

He promised to bring inflation down to 4 percent.It’s now running at double-digit rates, and
hit 18.2 percent earlier this year.The
producer price index the past three months has averaged an annual rate of some
13 percent.In fact, between January
1977 and August 1980, consumer prices have risen 42.3 percent.

In the fade of all this economic bad news, Mr. Carter has
taken to telling voters that things will get better.But today we found the answer to that.The consumer price index released just this
morning showed that the cost of living went up to an annual rate of 12.7
percent in September.

Inflation is not easing;it is rapidly rising.The double
digit punishment of Jimmy Carter is not receding.At this rate it will continue to eat up your
incomes, ravage those of you who are retired, and destabilize our entire
economy.

No matter what Mr. Carter says, inflation is getting worse.

Right now, as I speak to you, nearly eight million American
men and women are out of work.You or a
loved one may be unfortunate enough to be one of them.Their distress is obvious—savings may be destroyed,
houses may be lost, and families may go unfed.

As a candidate four years ago, Mr. Carter adopted what he
called the “misery index.”He added the
rate of inflation to the rate of unemployment and for 1976 it totaled 12.5
percent.This was his “misery index” and
he suggested that no President has a right to seek reelection with an index of
12.5 percent.Today by his own standard
he does not deserve reelection.The
misery index is two-thirds higher than it was four years ago—almost 20 percent.

Interest rates are again rising.The prime rate was only 6 ¼ percent in
January 1977.It is 14 percent and
rising today.The mortgage rate for new
homes was 9 percent in January 1977.It
is 13 ½ percent or higher today.It is
now estimated that only one in eleven young families can now afford to purchase
a home—something that used to be the hallmark of the American dream.

Indeed, of all the sectors of the American economy, few have
been hit so hard as housing.In 1979 our
housing industry produced 1.7 million units.This year we’ll be 500,000 short of that.To meet the real demand for housing, we
should be building at least 800,000 more units this year.

When Jimmy Carter took office in 1977 a median priced new
home sold for $47,400.It cost $306 a month
to pay the mortgage on that home.Today
that same home would cost $556 a month—an increase of 81 percent in just over
three years.

Even Jimmy Carter’s Secretary of Housing and Urban
Development admitted this last spring, conceding that “for many hardworking
people, the American dream is denied because housing is growing beyond their
reach.”

Productivity has fallen six straight quarters, as America continues
to fall further behind our industrial competitors around the world.American workers are ready to compete, but
American companies don’t have the new plants and equipment for them to do
so.More and more American jobs are
exported overseas, and new jobs are not being created here at home.

A little more than a week ago the President said we are all
better off than we were four years ago. He could have looked at the report of
his own economic indicators and learned that in purchasing power the average
American is 8 ½ percent poorer than he was four years ago.

Total industrial production grew 10.8 percent in 1976.Total industrial production has fallen 6.7
percent this past year.

That’s not just a record of economic failure.That is failure on a scale so vast, in
dimensions so broad, with effects so devastating, that it is virtually without
parallel in American history.

The other day someone said:“The Carter administration is giving failure a bad name.”And they haven’t just failed last month or
last year.They’ve been failing for four
years.

On August 28th of this year Mr. Carter announced his
fifth, “new” economic program.After
four straight failures, it’s no wonder he wanted to wait until after the
election and submit it to Congress next year.

Mr. Carter has blamed OPEC for inflation.He’s blamed the American people for
inflation.He’s blamed the Federal
Reserve Board for inflation.The symbol
of this administration is a finger pointing at someone else.

And on October 14th, after spending most of the
first part of the campaign running away from his economic record, he finally
made a speech on the economy.And he
came up with a new list of who, or what, to blame for inflation.

The number one item on his list was, and I quote:“the failure to raise adequate revenues at a
time of greatly increased public spending.”

What that means in plain English is that he didn’t raise our
taxes enough.

Now, Mr. Carter has already imposed the two largest tax
increases in our nation’s history.And
by 1981, he will have succeeded in doubling the tax load on the American
people—the equivalent of a tax increase on a family of four of more than $5,000
a year.Now, I’d like to ask him:isn’t that enough?Apparently not—according to his economic
plan, annual taxes will go up $86 billion next year alone, and $500 billion
over the next five years.

I would also like to ask him why government spending isn’t
to blame.He’s increased government
spending by nearly 60 percent in four years.It is this incredible increase in spending that has caused inflationary
deficits—not low taxes.We don’t have
inflation because we are living too well.We have it because government is living too well.

Mr. Carter is acting as if he hasn’t been in charge for the
past three and a half years; as if someone else ran up nearly $200 billion in
federal red ink; as if someone else was responsible for the largest deficit,
including off-budget items, in American history; and, as if someone else was
predicting a budget deficit for this fiscal year that began October 1st
of $30 billion or more.

He has other scapegoats for inflation, such as oil price
increases.He doesn’t explain why Japan and West
Germany, who import practically all their oil,
don’t have our high inflation rates and economies in a state of crisis.

Finally, he blames “the long decline in our productivity
growth.”I would like to ask him:which President has presided over six
straight quarters of falling productivity?Which President by 1981 will have increased the punitive tax burden on
our economy by some $300 billion?Which
President has created two new cabinet departments and has increased the burden
of federal regulations?

In the same speech Mr. Carter went on to misrepresent my
economic program.You know, it’s one
thing when his administration jimmies its own economic figures to make its
record look good, but when he starts jimmying my figures, it’s going too far.

What our nation needs—what the American people want—is a
humane economy, one that sees them not as interchangeable parts to whom
unemployment is a “temporary inconvenience” but as individual human beings and
members of families with feelings, hopes, and dreams.Earlier this year, Vice President Mondale
summed up unforgettably the approach of the Carter administration toward the
economic suffering of millions.He said,
speaking of inflationary problems, “We think what we’re doing now will be using
unemployment for a while.We know that.”

I don’t think the American people want an administration
that talks about unemployment as something to be “used” against Americans.You don’t “use” the suffering of human
beings—you alleviate that suffering.

Tonight I want to share with you my vision of an economy
that works for the people and doesn’t seek to use them for policies made in Washington.

My plan, as I outlined in a speech in Chicago last month, is
rooted in a strategy for economicgrowth, a program that sees the American economic system as it is—a
huge, complex, dynamic system—that can work if the American people get a chance
to work.

Tonight, because of time limits, I can’t go into the same detail
I did in Chicago but I
want you to know that I stand by the specific points I made in that
speech.At the heart of that strategy
for economic growth are eight major steps:

1.We must
keep the rate of growth of government spending at reasonable and prudent
levels.

2.We must
reduce personal income tax rates and accelerate and simplify depreciation
schedules for business in an orderly, systematic way to provide incentives to
work, savings, investment, and productivity.

3.We must
review regulations that affect the economy, and change or eliminate them to
encourage economic growth.

4.We must
establish a stable, sound, and predictable monetary policy.

5.We must
promote the export of American products aboard.

6.We must
revitalize American industry.

7.We must
adopt an energy policy that will allow our economy to grow, and our standard of
living to rise.

8.And we
must restore confidence by following a consistent national economic policy that
does not change from month to month.

One of the most critical elements of my economic program is
the control of government spending.Billions of dollars of waste, extravagance, fraud, and abuse in federal
agencies simply are being ignored, for all practical purposes, by the Carter
administration.

Let me give you one example—and there are, sadly, many—to
show you what happens to the dollars you send to Washington.

A couple of years ago one of the worst scandals in the
history of the federal government broke out in the General Services
Administration, the agency that buys government supplies and manages federal
property.

There were more than 130 indictments, and GSA auditors
estimated they were looking for $100 million lost to fraud and another $130
million lost to mismanagement every year.

Mr. Carter’s answer to all of this was politics-as-usual.The GSA mess is still not cleaned up and the
men who tried to clean it up are no longer in the GSA.

Let me make a pledge to you tonight:If you give me the opportunity, I will put
the corruption fighters back in charge at GSA to finish the job they started,
and that goes for every department, agency, and bureau in the executive branch.

I am confident that we can squeeze at least 2 percent out of
what otherwise would be spent in fiscal year 1981, adding 2 percent the next
year, and so on, up to 7 percent by fiscal year 1985.And that is a modest projection.

Actually, I believe we can do even better.My goal will be spending reductions of 10
percent by fiscal year 1984.

I will appoint men and women in key positions who share my
belief that it is the government and not the people that must cut back in
spending.And I will work with citizens’
task forces that will examine every department and agency.

This strategy for spending control does not require slashing
necessary programs.To the contrary, I
will defend the integrity of the Social Security system and work to improve
those programs which provide for the disadvantaged and those in need.

The second major element of my economic program is a tax
rate reduction plan.This plan calls for
an across-the-board 10 percent reduction in personal income tax rates in each
of the next three years.After that, we
will index tax rates so that inflation doesn’t force taxpayers into higher tax
brackets.

Jimmy Carter says this can’t be done.In fact, he says it shouldn’t be done.He favors the current crushing tax burden
because it fits into his philosophy of government as the dominating force in
American economic life.

Official projections of the Congressional Budget Office show
that by fiscal year 1985, if the current rates of taxation are still in effect,
federal tax revenues will rise to over one trillion dollars a year.In 1981, the increase will take $86 billion
more than government took this year.

The President says my proposed reduction of tax rates would
be inflationary.Well, let me ask him a
simple question in economics.Why is it
inflationary if you keep more of your earnings and spend them the way you want
to, but it isn’t inflationary if he takes them and spends them the way he wants
to?

The fact is this program will give us a balanced budget by
1983, and possibly by 1982.

We also need faster, less complex depreciation schedules for
business.Outdated depreciation
schedules now prevent many industries from modernizing their plants.Faster depreciation would allow these
companies to generate more capital internally, permitting them to make the
investment necessary to create new jobs, to help workers become more
productive, and to become more competitive in world markets.

Another vital part of this strategy concerns government
regulations which work against rather than for the interests of the
people.No one argues with the intent of
regulations dealing with health, safety, and clean air and water.But we must carefully re-examine our regulatory
structure to assess to what degree regulations have cost jobs and economic
growth.There should and will be a
thorough and systematic review of the thousands of federal regulations that
affect the economy.

Along with spending control, tax reform, and deregulations,
a sound, stable, and predictable monetary policy is essential to restoring
economic health.The Federal Reserve
Board is, and should remain, independent of the Executive Branch of government.But the President must nominate those who
serve on the Federal Reserve Board.My
appointees would share my commitment to restoring the value and stability of
the American dollar.

The federal government can also take a greater rode in
promoting American exports.I have
suggested that we revise Export-Import Bank rules to assist in the export of
automobiles.The government should also
work to break down foreign barriers to our exports.

We must also revitalize American industry by exploring areas
of patent law reform which would encourage increased innovation and inventing.

Finally, we must adopt an energy policy which will enhance
our economic growth.We must implement a
balanced energy program that will encourage prudent energy conservation, along
with increased domestic energy production.

As soon as possible, we must end federal price, production,
and allocation controls, which have discouraged energy production, and
accelerate the leasing of federal lands.When fiscally possible, we must remedy the disincentive effects of the
so-called windfall profits tax.Finally,
we should streamline and reform regulations which block the use of coal and
safe nuclear power, and we should encourage the development of alternative
fuels, such as solar and biomass.

Finally, let me say something about one part of the American
economic life that represents what I mean by a humane economy—the American
home.Your home transcends mere
economics.It is part of your life, not
just a part of the economy.

The people—especially the young people—of this country should
not have to suffer a continued housing crisis.An administration committed to a housing policy that puts workers back
to work, lenders back to making home loans, and young couples and all the
people of this country into better housing—that kind of administration can turn
the housing picture around.

As soon as fiscally possible, I will ask Congress to
increase the amount of savings account income exempt from taxation, to
encourage Americans to increase their savings and generate new capital for home
loans.

And we’ll explore some new ways of financing housing, and of
stimulating housing rehabilitation in the neighborhoods of our large cities.

All of these specific steps, taken together, make up a
comprehensive strategy.Instead of the
on-again and off-again policies of Mr. Carter, I think we must have one
coherent program that we can stick with.

Thus, what I am proposing is a strategy which encompasses
many elements—none of which can do the job alone, but all of which together can
get it done.

This strategy would depend on the will of the people to
regain control of their government.

Throughout this campaign, I’ve been saying that the economy
concerns more than mere statistics—it concerns people, families, human hopes,
and human suffering.

Each American family has its own story about what the Carter
economy has done.But the other day I
came across a story that sums up what the American people have been
through.The story is all the more
poignant because it concerns a child’s disappointment.

It appeared in the Fort
Wayne, Indiana, News-Sentinel
and concerns a Fort Wayne fifth
grader named Andrea Baden who wanted to buy a pair of roller skates.So, in the great American tradition, she
saved her allowance until she had the money to buy them.

Andrea put it this way:“When I went back to the store the price had gone up.I saved more money but when I got back again,
the price had gone up again.It’s just
not fair.”

But Andrea has learned something as a fifth grader that Mr.
Carter seems to have forgotten or not to have learned at all:inflation hurts people.It hurts when you want to buy a pair of
roller skates—and it hurts when adults have to buy food and pay for heating and
other necessities.It hurts older
Americans who suffer unimaginably from what inflation does to the fixed
incomes.And unemployment hurts even
more.

This election is going to determine what kind of country
Andrea Baden and millions of other American children are going to grow up
in.Will it be a country in which
everything keeps on going up in price, and jobs are harder to find and
keep?Or will it be a country where,
because of our efforts, beginning in January of 1981, savings will mean
something, prices will be stable, and there will be jobs for people who want to
work?

I would like very much to do something about that lack of
fairness to hard-working Americans and, Andrea, to thrifty Americans like you.

I need your help, your support, and your prayers.But first of all, I need your commitment,
your hope, and your belief in this great nation’s ability to begin again.

It just hasn’t been fair or easy for any of us for the past
four years.

I think the time has come for fair play for Americans.If you agree, together we can have a new
beginning, for ourselves and for our children.